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You start a textarea by adding the tag: <TEXTAREA>, much the same as you would when you add a text FIELD: <INPUT TYPE="text">. The difference is that you have to CLOSE a Textarea aswell, and the text between the opening and closing Textarea tags will be considered as the default text to display when the page is first loaded (the page that displays your textarea).

<TEXTAREA STYLE="width: 500px; height: 300px;">
This text will be regarded as DEFAULT text for this textarea...
</TEXTAREA>